Gorilla

How to spell gorilla

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce gorilla

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gorilla mean?

1. nounA large, powerfully built ground-dwelling ape native to the forests of central Africa.

Gorilla in a sentence

• The zoo's new gorilla enclosure mimics a tropical rainforest.

• A male gorilla can weigh more than two hundred kilograms.

Where does gorilla come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek gorillai, a name found in the Greek translation of an account by the Carthaginian explorer Hanno, who around the sixth century BC described a tribe of hairy, wild beings encountered on the West African coast. Scholars have never been certain whether these creatures were apes or humans, so the original meaning is genuinely uncertain. In 1847 the American missionary and naturalist Thomas S. Savage revived the ancient word as the scientific name for the great ape he was describing, choosing Troglodytes gorilla. From this Latinised scientific label the everyday English word spread quickly through the nineteenth century. Its accidental near-identical sound to 'guerrilla', a quite separate word borrowed from Spanish for irregular fighters, is purely coincidental and is the main reason the two are so often confused in writing.

How the word is built

• gorill- (from Greek gorillai, the name given to a tribe of hairy beings)
• -a (Latin scientific noun ending)

Words that sound like gorilla

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• guerrilla: A member of a small independent armed group that fights a larger regular force using ambushes and raids.